For starters, Google Analytics 360 users can now import data from the Salesforce CRM tool such as leads and opportunities, among other pieces. This could allow marketers to have a more complete view of the customer journey from first contact to sale and build a better understanding of how that fits together for a successful outcome. Of course, Salesforce has its own marketing data from Marketing Cloud and it has its own analytics products including Salesforce Wave and Einstein Analytics.

This allows companies using Google’s analytics products to mix and match data between the two systems. Customers tend to use multiple products and that’s why these kinds of partnerships develop — to make it easier to get a big picture view across product sets.

The companies are taking it one step with further with this initial piece of the partnership by also providing connectors from Salesforce data to Google BigQuery, Google’s data warehouse service, where users can combine this data with other enterprise datasets.

Finally, the companies are building a connection between Salesforce and Google’s ad pipeline to connect the best prospects with the right ad at the right time to push the sale to completion. In the company blog post announcing the partnership details, Google had this to say about the advertising link:

“Marketers can use the tools in AdWords and DoubleClick Search to optimize their bidding on search ads based on the goal of actual sales (offline conversions tracked in Salesforce) rather than just basic website leads. Or they can create an audience list in Analytics 360 of qualified leads from Sales Cloud and use AdWords or DoubleClick Bid Manager so their display ads reach people with similar characteristics.”

This is a case where combining the two types of information across sources could provide insights and abilities that wouldn’t have been possible from either source alone. It also enables each company to compete with its rivals in this space, says Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research.

“This partnership offering gives customers another choice in the market and is targeted towards the traditional Adobe – Microsoft buyer,” he said. Adobe has been a big player in this space with its analytics, advertising and marketing tools. Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016 for $26.2 billion, which gives it access to a wealth of data to share with its CRM tools.

“The goal is to bring online and offline interactions together with the power of cloud analytics so that [marketing] campaigns can be executed without the integration and manual gaps most marketers face today,” Wang explained.

This is just the first step in a much broader partnership between the two companies and they promise much deeper integration over the coming year including bringing in product specific data, lead conversion likelihood and lifetime customer value.